Actually, I'm not sure I'm even talking to anyone but myself (and maybe Ryan...Hi Ryan!). So many of the people I used to follow are not active on their blogs anymore. Not sure if many of my artist friends blog anymore. Hopefully they're just too busy creating beautiful art!!

For now, this is probably going to be an online journal for me to track my life and that's ok too.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

This week I was able to spend some nice time painting during the evenings. Our third class in Olga Furman's Paint your Heart & Soul class was from Nikol Wikman and we learned how to do some fun techniques. Here is the project we completed:

It got a little dark and I didn't have the proper sponge to get the sky clouds soft like I wanted, but it is what it is :)

Here is a colorful little happiness bird 8 x 10 canvas

I thought I'd try and make a few 'lovey dovey' Valentine pieces :)

Here's one, 8 x 10 canvas:

Here's the start of four 6 x 6 chunky canvases:

Here's where they ended up last night. Hope to finish and even add a couple more!

CHECK THIS OUT!!

Carolyn Dube has 7 new stencils and is having a giveaway! This is just a quick post to let you know too because it ends on Tuesday, Jan 31st!
Click here to enter!!

Monday, January 23, 2017

Today I played on 9 x 12 mixed media paper to see what kind of backgrounds I could create and what I could do with them. All started out pretty similar to this.....

Then this happened to one:

And this happened to another:

ALL three were very fun, messy and a little therapuetic to create!! At times when I start on a canvas or any other substrate I can be more nervous and scared of messing up. And about 95% of the time when I'm painting for a particular event or person, that is when I WILL mess up! I mean, I create 'HAPPY ACCIDENTS', right Bob?

Saturday, January 21, 2017

It's been a busy couple of weeks! There are two local benefit auctions here that I was asked to donate to. I decided to go with some mixed media image transfer pieces. I made a couple for my granddaughters at Christmas so I thought I'd try again.

One is for a local hockey club family so this is a photo transfer of one of the team players on a 12x16 wooden canvas:

This second one is for an auction in the Grand Forks area so I went with a UND Hockey player with a Ralph Englestad quote, also on a 12 x 16 wooden canvas:

I've also started a 24 x 30 canvas for my office at work! It's intimidating to do something so big but this is what I have so far :)

I have no clue where it will end up, but I'm going with the whole 'intuitive painting' plan and we'll just have to see!!

I also am taking advantage of Roben Marie-Smith's free 'Organize Your Creative Space' series. Today I listened to her live Q & A chat while cleaning mine! She has some excellent tips!

I love that I have the space to create, but I'm not gonna lie, someday I'd love to be upstairs with windows and sunshine ;)

I'm also taking a couple of classes this year! A year long class hosted by Olga Furman (online) with many other teachers. It's going to be so fun!

I'm going to California in June to take a class with Kelly Berkey too! Can't hardly wait for that!

I hope you all are doing well.....if any of you are still out there. Seems as if Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest have taken over for ways to share our art with the world but I thought I'd just pop in and see if anyone is still reading blogs.

I might just start a whole new blog...new year...new dreams...fresh start!